The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan Page B

hair on the back of his neck made him look up. On a ramp above him and to the right, a shaggy gray wolf stood looking at him.
    “No!” He scrambled to his feet and ran. “This is a dream! A nightmare! I want to wake up!” He ran, and his vision blurred. The blurs shifted. A buzzing filled his ears, then faded, and as it went, the shimmering in his eyes steadied.
    He shivered with the cold and knew this for a dream, certain and sure,from the first moment. He was dimly aware of some shadowy memory of dreams preceding this, but this one he knew. He had been in this place before, on previous nights, and if he understood nothing of it, he still knew it for a dream. For once, knowing changed nothing.
    Huge columns of polished redstone surrounded the open space where he stood, beneath a domed ceiling fifty paces or more above his head. He and another man as big could not have encircled one of those columns with their arms. The floor was paved with great slabs of pale gray stone, hard yet worn by countless generations of feet.
    And centered beneath the dome was the reason why all those feet had come to this chamber. A sword, hanging hilt down in the air, apparently without support, seemingly where anyone could reach out and take it. It revolved slowly, as if some breath of air caught it. Yet it was not really a sword. It seemed made of glass, or perhaps crystal, blade and hilt and crossguard, catching such light as there was and shattering it into a thousand glitters and flashes.
    He walked toward it and put out his hand, as he had done each time before. He clearly remembered doing it. The hilt hung there in front of his face, within easy reach. A foot from the shining sword, his hand splayed out against empty air as if it had touched stone. As he had known it would. He pushed harder, but he might as well have been shoving against a wall. The sword turned and sparkled, a foot away and as far out of reach as if on the other side of an ocean.
    Callandor
. He was not certain whether the whisper came inside his head or out; it seemed to echo ’round the columns, as soft as the wind, everywhere at once, insistent.
Callandor. Who wields me wields destiny. Take me, and begin the final journey
.
    He took a step back, suddenly frightened. That whisper had never come before. Four times before he had had this dream—he could remember that even now; four nights, one after the other—and this was the first time anything had changed in it.
    The Twisted Ones come
.
    It was a different whisper, from a source he knew, and he jumped as if a Myrddraal had touched him. A wolf stood there among the columns, a mountain wolf, almost waist-high and shaggy white and gray. It stared at him intently with eyes as yellow as his own.
    The Twisted Ones come
.
    “No,” Perrin rasped. “No! I will not let you in! I—will—not!”
    He clawed his way awake and sat up in his hut, shaking with fear and cold and anger. “I will not,” he whispered hoarsely.
    The Twisted Ones come
.
    The thought was clear in his head, but the thought was not his own.
    The Twisted Ones come, brother
.
     

CHAPTER
5

Nightmares Walking
    Leaping from his bed, Perrin snatched his axe and ran outside, barefoot and wearing nothing but thin linen, heedless of the cold. The moon bathed the clouds with pale white. More than enough light for his eyes, more than enough to see the shapes slipping through the trees from all sides, shapes almost as big as Loial, but with faces distorted by muzzles and beaks, half-human heads wearing horns and feathered crests, stealthy forms stalking on hooves or paws as often as booted feet.
    He opened his mouth to shout warning, and suddenly the door of Moiraine’s hut burst open and Lan dashed out, sword in hand and shouting, “Trollocs! Wake, for your lives! Trollocs!” Shouts answered him as men began to tumble from their huts, garbed for sleep, which for most meant not at all, but with swords ready. With a bestial roar, the Trollocs rushed